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IoT based SCADA integrated with Fog for power distribution automation

Conference Paper · June 2017

DOI: 10.23919/CISTI.2017.7975732

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 IoT based SCADA Integrated with Fog for
Power Distribution Automation
Rijo Jackson Tom Suresh Sankaranarayanan, SMIEEE
Research Scholar Assoc. Professor
Dept. of Computer Science Engineering Dept. of Information Technology
SRM University SRM University
Chennai, India Chennai, India
rijojackson@gmail.com suresh.sa@ktr.srmuniv.ac.in

Abstract—Electrical Grid we have is more than 50 years old. The

Power Distribution Automation (DA) which is a part of
integration of information technology to the electric grid system smart grid refers to automation of the entire distribution
is expected to address many shortcomings of the current and system operation and covers functions from protection of
traditional electrical grids that have resulted in Smart Grid SCADA and associated information technology applications.
which is gaining lot of interest and momentum. In Smart Grid, Distribution Automation has the ability to mix local
Power Distribution is one part which requires monitoring and automation, remote control of switching devices, and central
control. Lot of technologies and have been applied in Smart grid decision making into a cohesive, flexible, and cost effective
towards sensing and action. Supervisory Control and Data operating architecture for power distribution systems
Acquisition (SCADA) system is very well proven within the
maintaining the Integrity of the Specifications
substation region. There has been very less monitoring done on
the distribution side due to the geographical distribution. One of the major problem for the lack of Distribution
Currently, Internet of Things has paved way for connecting huge Automation system in India is the investment for installing
number of devices to the Internet which would be very much sensors, Remote Terminal Units (RTUs) and creating a
effective and beneficial for power distribution and Automation. communication infrastructure. India has a lot to do with
So accordingly, an IoT based SCADA integrated with Fog for improving the DA infrastructure as it will be beneficial for the
Distribution Automation system has been proposed which takes reduction of the A g g r e g a t e Te c h n i c a l and
care of the consumer utilization, outage management, power C o m m e r c i a l (AT & C) losses and providing better quality
quality control and pole transformer health. This is supported by supply.
fog computing which does real-time streaming analytics. This
helps in reducing the internet bandwidth and latency for Cloud Computing has helped in bringing IoT to a reality.
immediate control action. But not every IoT system can get the advantages of cloud
computing. Industrial IoT systems require high speed control
Keywords—IoT; SCADA; Fog Computng; Distribution
actions by immediately processing the data obtained from
automation; Smart Grids. sensors. The delay caused by cloud in IoT System can cause
damage to the systems that require instant processing of the
data stream and quick feedback. This has resulted in a new
I. INTRODUCTION method of computing called Fog computing.
The electric Grid that we have is half a century old. To Fog computing has the characteristics of the cloud
meet the demands, reduce losses and transport electricity computing at the edge, but at the same time relies on the
effectively, the present grid needs to be updated. Cloud for huge level of historical data processing. It forms a
The integration of information technology to the electric bridge between the edge devices and the cloud. Fog
grid system is expected to address many shortcomings of the computing got lot of advantages over cloud computing like
current and traditional electrical grids that have resulted in reduced latency, less processing delay and low bandwidth.
Smart Grid which is gaining lot of interest and momentum [1].
These smart grids integrate advance sensing technologies So for addressing the issue of power distribution
automation, we here propose an IoT based SCADA integrated
employing sensors, Control systems and communication
with Fog Router and Cloud. The rest of paper is organized as
systems into the current electricity grids. This improves the
follows. Section II gives a complete literature survey
generation, storage alternatives, optimizing assets and pertaining to technologies in power distribution and
operational efficiency [2,3]. The smart grid has a vision which automation. Section III talks on IoT based SCADA integrated
incorporates a broad set of applications, comprising software with Fog architecture and its functionalities for power
and hardware technologies that allow utilities to participate, distribution and automation. Section IV is Conclusion and
interface with, and intelligently control the present electric Future work.
grid.
 II. LITERATURE REVIEW SCADA components (except the field devices) as a single
In this section, we will be talking in brief on various service.
technologies pertaining to smart grid like wireless sensors, IoT C. 6LoWPAN based sensor nodes:
protocols and also about Fog computing . 6LoWPAN (IPv6 Low-power wireless Personal Area
A. Wireless Sensor technologies in Smart Grid Network) is a new set of standards made by the Internet
Wireless sensors help Smart Grids to obtain its maximum Engineering Task Force (IEFT) for IPv6 over low power
efficiency. Wireless Sensor Network (WSN) as “smart sensing embedded devices. The routing over low power lossy Network
peripheral information” play a vital role in smart grid (RoLL) work group has come up with a new protocol called
technology development. WSN technology in the smart grid Routing Protocol for Low-power Lossy Networks (RPL)
will also further promote the industrial development of WSNs defined in the RFC 6550. Thus using sensors which are
[4,5,6]. These WSNs got lot of technical advantages pertaining 6LoWPAN can ensure that the real-time monitoring and
to online monitoring system with timely warning for control demands of the industrial system can be achieved.
catastrophes, locating the position of faults and shorten the III. IOT BASED SCADA INTEGRATED WITH
time of fault recovery and thereby improve the quality of FOG ARCHITECTURE
power supply.
The overall system architecture for an IoT based SCADA
WSN have proved to be a very supporting technology for integrated with Fog for Power Distribution Automation system
realizing Smart Grids (SG), especially in areas of power been presented. The Distribution Automation sensing area is
generation, transmission, metering infrastructure, providing divided into the following 1) Smart Metering for monitoring
cost effective control mechanisms [7, 8]. and controlling the home supply. 2) Line sensors for
In [9], they use SG for green communication and other monitoring the voltage and the current supply in the lines. 3)
information communication (ICTs). The overview of SG and Intelligent Electronic Devices (IEDs) monitor the parameters
its communication and security challenges have been like temperature, loading, voltage, current and power supplied.
presented in [10]. So towards monitoring the Transformers, Power lines and
Also, the study in [11] provides a reference architecture of Smart meters, Fog router is placed in between the Pole
the SG communication system and its major components. In Transformer and Consumer side. Pole mounted Fog router are
addition, that survey discusses the four major SG applications, placed in such a way that Pole Transformer’s IED’s use single
which are used to identify the key requirements for smart grid hop to reach Fog router for better efficiency.
communication systems. The smart meters that are to be installed in individual homes
Various, diverse range power grid applications from Home shall use 6LoWPAN standard. Since this is an IP based
area Network (HAN) to power Transmission and Distribution communication built upon the IEEE 802.15.4, every energy
(T&D) monitoring have been developed and used allowing for meter gets an individual IP address. This forms the
robust and energy efficient monitoring and control in a SG Neighborhood Area Network based on 6LoWPAN. These
[12,13]. collect voltage, current and Power consumption data from
homes and send it to Fog Routers. IEDs fixed on the Pole
B. IoT in Distribution Automation Transformers also use 6LoWPAN based communication
Cloud-based SCADA is a small, highly specialized capability. These 6LoWPAN based sensors and meters are
research area with only a few literatures. They define cloud- connected to 6LoWPAN aggregator and use multi hop
based SCADA architectures, but focus on implementing a communication to reach the Fog Router. The Fog routers act
solution from the ground up, as opposed to utilizing pre- as the 6LoWPAN gateway, where the data from smart meters,
existing SCADA solutions [14, 15]. line sensors, IEDs are collected in real time for analytics and
Liu, et al. presents a generalized overview of clouds and use Backbone network like 3G/4G for communicating to
SCADA, and propose the possibility of running SCADA in Cloud. These Fog routers supports heterogeneity, cloud
the cloud [16]. integration and distributed data analytics as we take the
Gligor and Turc in [17] recommend exposing each advantage of the low latency with a wide and dense
SCADA component as a service and deploying them through a geographical distribution. This also reduces the network
Local Directory Service (LDS). This approach is very flexible; traffic, Latency and provides Scalability. DA helps in
allowing users to extend the SCADA system by adding new improving reliability of the Grid. It helps in improving the
functionalities to existing services or define new ones in efficiency of the operation and also extending the asset life.
accordance with needs and formulated requirements towards a A. Functionalities of IoT System
web-based SCADA system on Rackspace cloud resources.
Goose et al. presented a secure SCADA cloud framework The IoT based SCADA integrated with Fog
called SKYDA [18]. This SCADA system is designed to take architecture for Power Distribution Automation takes care of
advantage of the scalability and reliability offered by a cloud- outage management which is one of the basic
based infrastructure. They focused on providing a high level functionality that the fog router will help us achieve by
understanding of SCADA replication using clouds, moving all locating the location of faults by querying the smart
meters for Voltage and Current.
 Fig.1 IoT based SCADA integrated with Fog Architecture

Fig.2 System Flow Diagram for IoT based Distribution Automation System
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